The GPL is a very good model when you have expertise but do not have the money or time to develop everything in house. GLP gives redistribution rights to all users of the code (free market) and promotes collaboration (cheap and fast development).
The GPL is mostly bad model for corporations which target broad market after years of development and have money and time to do it. It is also bad for the software houses which are in a position to monopolize markets. Think Microsoft Windows, IBM MQ, Oracle DB, Adobe Photoshop.
Apache is decent model when you have expertise and money, but do not have significant market share yet.
The GPL is by far the best software license for end-users of the code. Non-software enterprises like banks or states and folk like your dad benefit a lot from GPL license.
]]>The edges of a movement are always full of people who have been recruited on the basis that there’s something in it for them (eg gratis software they can freely reuse), and who don’t yet understand what the movement stands for and why. All movements grow at their edges, so in a growing movement there tends to be more of those people relative to the core of people who do understand the issues. At the core of the “open source” movement is the software freedom movement, whowill never stop advocating for software freedom for users, and most people who stay in the “open source” movement for long enough will eventually become part of that core.
]]>It was interesting to see the momentum of the LibreOffice fork after OpenOffice changed from LGPLv3 to the Apache license. Last year Mr. Torvalds once again stated that the GPLv2 was a great choice for his kernel.
The “fractious religious wars” between the political left and right have never ceased. There is no “nagging doubt imposed by the GPL”. There is only the certainty that the end users will have control over the software they run.
]]>That sounds like BSD licensing. The BSD license has been described generally as being protective of the coder, not the code. In many circles it is considered more “free” (as in libre, not gratis) than the GPL.
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